Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the RTW Dunham College of Business at Houston Christian University. I'm your host, Darren Scheer, and this is a show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On today's episode, we're joined by Brandon West. Brandon founded FOSS Creative at the age of 26 out of his home office 10 years ago, as I just discovered. A strategy first digital marketing agency headquartered in Florida, Gainesville, to be precise. FOSS's growth and culture have been highlighted in the Inc. 5000, Gator 100, and Florida Trend Magazine. Their driving passion is to fulfill its mission, which is to be a company that team members never want to leave. Clients can't do without, and the world is better for. And in doing so, exemplify the love of Jesus Christ. Brandon, welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast.
SPEAKER_00Hey, my friend. So good to be with you, Darren.
SPEAKER_01You too. Brandon, when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work in the marketplace?
SPEAKER_00I remember 10 years ago. My wife and I were just talking about this recently. 10 years ago, starting a company, trying to be an entrepreneur, and asking this question for the first time ever in my life. What does entrepreneurship and Christianity look like smashed together? And I remember when we were building out the first ever website that we have, and just a simple question, right at the beginning, simple question. Are we going to include the name of Jesus anywhere on this website? Is the word Jesus going to be used anywhere on this website? And I remember early on in the company thinking, you know what? I think excellence is the place where Jesus exists in this business. It shouldn't, you know, and we were making this very conscious decision early on at the beginning, 10 years ago. I think it's going to, I think Christ is going to be felt, not spoken. And four years ago is really when I think to answer your question, things began to change for me. I think the easy thing is to say that excellence alone is my gospel methodology inside of my company. And I would just argue there's probably somebody better out there than what you at what you do. And so if excellence is the only method by which we export gospel-centered ministry in our work, I think that we're severely lacking. And so God showed up four years ago. I joined a really cool organization, Darren, that you know as well, called C12.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00C12 is the world's largest uh Christ-centered peer advisory forum in the world. And so once a month, I take off a full day from work and I go down to Ocala. I'm in Gainesville, Florida, and I spend it with a bunch of business executive leaders who are trying to figure out what's business as a ministry look like. And I started to hear stories of people who weren't just like, we do great work and hope that people ask us, what's the reason for this great work within you? Which just doesn't happen. And instead, we tried to we started to say, hey, God has a bigger purpose here for uh not just great work, but great work that has a huge kingdom impact through exporting love, care, compassion, and ministry through the company.
SPEAKER_01Wow. That's that's really interesting. Uh just to back up a little bit, you because yeah, that is what I hear often and and what I think uh often, because it's it's kind of convenient to say to just sort of settle on, well, be ready to give a reason for the hope that's within you, and you know just wait and see what happens, you know, like like maybe somebody will, maybe somebody won't. But you said that it just doesn't happen that way.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I I don't know about you, Darren, but in my life, people don't just like run off to me in publics and just be like, the kindest person I've ever met. They're like, dude, I know some Mormons, they're a lot kinder than you are. Like, that's my life, typically. And so there's got to be some sort of distinctive. Uh, there's gotta be some sort of distinctive that that persuades the way that I live and the way that I lead my company as well. And so for us, we're just trying to explore what that looks like and then do it with faithfulness. We've been inspired by so many other business owners who are doing this well around the globe. Um, and we're just trying to say, God, who are you calling us uniquely to minister to? What I've found is that for there's kind of this evolution of business and faith integration. There's this evolution. The first step is somebody who, like us, says, I just want to do great work. That's what I'm gonna do. It's gonna be a great product, and that's my ministry to the world. Then there's somebody who's like, hey, I make money. I'm supposed to give it away. And they start, you know, writing a check. But I've I've found in my life, writing a check sometimes, getting out my wallet is a lot easier than me getting out my calendar and committing to somebody, committing my time. We use this acronym at FOS. You're supposed to give your life away, L-I-F-E. Labor, influence, finances, and expertise. So not just my money, my labor, my influence, my finances, and my expertise, all that I am given away to the people around me. So it starts with excellence and service, it rises up to this. I'm gonna give my my money away, and then eventually get to this place where I'm gonna give my life and my business away, all that I have. Um, uh you've probably heard it said before, time, talent, and treasure would be another way of saying that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Wow. Give your life away. That's powerful. Your labor, uh, your what was the your influence, your finances and your expertise.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, influence is such an interesting one. I mean, just think about it for a minute. Like at FOS, we have this leadership development program that we've created. It's three years long. The first year is all about leading yourself, second year is all about leading other people, and the third year is all about leading an organization, how to have an executive mindset. The first year is all about redefining leadership, not titles, not not the position. I remember I got to interview once uh the financial uh executive of Walt Disney World Corporation on stage. And I'll never forget when he got down from the stage, he came up, gave me a big hug, said, Dude, that was such a great interview. And then he just he grabbed me on the shoulder and he said, if we ever get to do this again, don't ever refer to me as the CFO of Walt Disney ever again. And he said, I want you to go read a book uh called The Leader Who Had No Title. And I I just it so hit me, right? Like leadership isn't about titles, it's about influence. You have influence. You have it at FOS. We we have influence in five different ways that we've defined. This is a C12 thing. We call it the care matrix, the care matrix. It's made up of five distinct areas in which we have influence that we're supposed to serve. Our team member starts there, gotta start there. Can't do ministry, give away a bunch of money, and your team's thinking, what about me? What about me? Gotta start with it's gotta start with with your team, but then they're families as well. They're families. We got to minister to one of our project manager last year. His mom died in December. A horrific season of his life. His father came into the studio uh in February of 2023, a couple months afterwards. And he's like, I'd like to speak to your whole team. And he gathers our 25 people in the front room and with tears in his eyes, weeping, thanks our team for the way that we ministered to him personally while his wife died caring for his son, who was therefore caring for his mom. And you're just like, like, that's like, what does it look like? It just looks like love, caring, compassion, right? So our team, their families gotta have that as well. Our clients, that's the obvious one. Our vendors and suppliers, like ministering to and caring for the person who cleans my office, you know, like like how do you do that? Well, and then the fifth one, we call it our local and global community. We're called to participate right here where we're situated, but then not with our eyes closed of the hurt that's happening in the rest of the world. And so for those five areas, we're trying to care for their physical needs, emotional needs, and spiritual needs. And those 15 cells, if you will, in that chart comprise what we call our strategic plan for ministry. We have a team at FOS, it's voluntary for people to join. It's called the care team. And the care team's job is not to implement this strategic plan for ministry, but instead to create a culture in which everybody at FOS is focused on bringing care, love, compassion, ministry, spiritual needs, physical needs, emotional needs to the all those people on that chart. And it's created this really cool system for delivering gospel-centered, love-focused, others-driven work outside of just a great website, great marketing, great social media, great branding.
SPEAKER_01Wow. So, and you were saying, you were telling me before that for the first six years you were praying at team meetings, which I mean, that right there is uh that would be a major shift for many Christian business owners, right? But but then there was a there was a a greater shift for you where the past four years it's been operationalizing business as a ministry throughout every fiber of the organization, you said. And was it was it joining C12 four years ago or like what else was kind of um leading to that shift?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think prayer is one of those really interesting things where it begins to create some sort of glass window between you and other people, you know, it can begin to be a separating thing where you say, How could I ever do this? Because other people in the organization don't feel this way. I was thinking about it recently. If I really loved sports, and I pretty much hate sports in life, I just nothing about sports excites me at all. If I loved sports, I suspect I would talk about it a lot because the people who are infatuated with sports, it tends to kind of roll off their tongue, right? Hanging out in groups, a dude's night, a party, uh, this thing at church, a function, you get together and you have sports watch parties and blah, blah, blah, blah. If I talked about sports a lot in the meeting and my current me was sitting in there, I would feel pretty isolated and alienated. The truth is, like, we talk about the things that we're passionate about. Why would I hide who I am? How could like, how is that even an authentic me on stage? I tell people, look, here's what we're about. Our ultimate purpose is to exemplify the love of Jesus, as you read in our mission statement. I tell that's why we exist, but you don't have to be there. But I would just ask that when we participate in things that that come from that place in my life and in my leadership and from that place in our company, I just ask that, you know, in the same way that if you said something I disagreed with, I would just be silent and I would be respectful. That's what I'm gonna ask for you in those moments. And the crazy thing is, as we've done that, as we've tried to just say, like, I want to be faithful to Christ in the middle of all this, like God's shown up. God's shown up. The more I just listen and I'm listening to the stories of other people who are doing it. Yes, C12 has been a big part of that, but other faithful business owners in my local community and around the world who are doing this make me say, maybe I can. And maybe, maybe it's not about overnight implementing the care team and the care matrix. It's these little small steps of faithfulness that lead to a different you and a different business and a different season and a different operation and more gospel-centered ministry years and years and years from now. It took me three years of preaching the gospel to a team member here. We're probably going to release her video, like a video telling her story in the next few months. I'm super excited about. She, when she joined our company, she didn't know Christ and we just loved on her well for years. Invited her, hey, come to small group, hey, come to church, hey, come to this. Nah, don't, nah, nah, you know, and she goes through our leadership development program. And at the end of the first uh year, there's a segment where we're talking about purpose, and they have to give a presentation around built on their unique purpose that they've discovered in life. And I just remember doing this check-in with her saying, hey, like, what were you ready? Like, where's your head out? What are you gonna talk about? And she's like, I I just really don't know. And I was like, Well, you you only got a couple weeks left. What are you gonna do? I just don't know. I was like, Well, what are you passionate about in life? And she's like, This and that. And I was like, Okay, well, why is that important? She's like, I don't know. So frustrated, you know, just at the end of herself. And I just turned to her for not the first time, you know, but like the hundredth time. And I just said, Look, if God's not real, then those things aren't even of value. There's no importance to those. And with tears in her eyes in this conference room, she just turned to me and she's like, Well, then how do I know God? And I bought her a John MacArthur study Bible. I tabbed out the book of John and the book of James, and I said, Here would be two cool places to start. And a month later, she was in our church. A month later after that, she was getting baptized, and two months later she was serving in children's ministry.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00You know, and just like, and I told I told my wife, like, hey, focus can close now if it needs to, like, you know, like go after the one. Go who's the one person in your company, who's the one person in your sphere of influence in your business where you would say, God is calling me to just go after this person because that person is enough, and that person has is is worthy of your seeking and searching and finding and going.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Brandon, what's one of the foundational scriptures that really drives what you do in business?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for me, 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 15, uh, Jesus died. Why? So that the people who live, that's me, that's you, would no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was risen again. For me, uh what is life except giving it away? I spoke recently at uh the Florida Leadership Academy at the University of Florida, and uh 200 students in the room and they do this really transparent review process afterwards where they review the speakers. And uh, you know, I gave a very gospel-centered message in this extremely secular context and had a lot of cool believers come up after afterwards, you know, I'm just so inspired to go share my faith more boldly. But when I get the results and the feedback, you know, one of them was was like, I hate how you said my life wasn't about me. And I'm thinking, I don't blame you. You know, that's where my head was at before. And we're saying as as as believers, my life, not for me, for others. What's that look like given away as an executive leader?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So what does that look like in FOS?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh, I mean, you know, in this pursuit of open-handed Jesus, it's yours type of leadership, everything has to be given away. The organizational strategy focused around mission first, not without the sake of a focus on margin. Uh a C12 saying, no mission, no margin. Sorry, no margin, no mission, no margin, no mission. You know, a margin in your company, financial time, whatever you however you want to define margin, you got none of that. You got no mission opportunities either. And so for us, it's about developing a really strong, well-positioned, healthy business that can do a lot of well-positioned, strong, and healthy ministry as well. We give away 50% of all of our profits as a company. Um, we give away another quarter of that just to our team. You know, there's a certain extent where you realize like I could have a lot more money. I could take home four times more than I do, but I just choose not to. Um, how much am I willing to believe Christ when he says it's more blessed to give than to receive? It's hard. It's hard. I remember talking with a mutual friend that you and I were talking about talking about before we hopped on this, talking to a mutual friend. I just said, you know, it's it's hard. And he's like, you know, he told me straight out, he's like, Brandon, it shouldn't be hard for you. It's a joy. And I was like, well, just being vulnerable. Um, I'm not there, but God's God's helped me go there. Um, how much does our behavior follow our heart? And how much does our heart follow our behavior? Uh for me, I I I want to discipline myself to do what I know is right and let my heart follow behind that at times, um, because I know that there's obedience there. And it's not, it, it's not inauthentic for us to do so. I think people say, well, unless my heart's there, I won't do it. No, it's only inauthentic if your heart's not there and you do it and you tell somebody, I really wanted to do it.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, and you're in uh you're in a culture of Christian business owners with C12, which is extremely rare. I mean, even among professing Christian business owners, like how and there's there's other things that you're doing that we'll we'll get into, but I'm just curious, like how much of that would be happening had you not uh I mean, there's guys like Alan Barnhart and you know Simon Lee, and I mean they're just talking about they're giving away every they're just giving away everything, you know. Talking about all my man crushes right now on the yeah, and it's just like the the culture that we're that we subject ourselves to um that we pursue is go is gonna spur us on in one direction or another, you know. And in scripture, obviously God wants his own people spurring each other on to good works. I mean, like how much of that is is happening just from that sharpening that happens through C12?
SPEAKER_00Oh, so much, because it's an authentic community that's willing to go there together. You know, Randy Alcorn in his book Money, Possessions, and Eternity, has this very contentious, if you will, appendix inside of it that talks about one of these key verses that we we spend a lot of time on about whether or not we should let our right hand know what our left hand is doing. What does that verse mean? Because if it means that we never talk about the things that we do in secret for any reason based on any heart condition, then the only stories that you'll ever tell of people, people to people, to friends, to family at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, at your birthday party is the next toy that you got, the next present that you received, the next addition to your house that you built, the next big item that you spent your money. That's it. Those are the only freaking stories we have to tell, unless we're willing to go, hey, here's what God's doing. It's not me, 100% him, 0% me. But isn't this cool how God's allowed me to be a part of this? And and Verandy Alcorn just put makes this position and this call to say, hey, maybe there's a way of us not, you know, pouring oil on our heads and trying to show that we're fasting. But maybe there's a way for us to vulnerably say, I'm a sinful person with a lot of selfishness, and yet God's allowing me to be a part of something cool. Can we rejoice in this together? Not so I look great, but it's like God looks great through me. That sort of storytelling inspires general. Generosity inspires generosity.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Giving things away inspires other people to give things away. Hoarding to yourself and boasting about your possessions is only fueling a culture of boasting and greater possessions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. There's a, you know, which is different than doing something so that you'll get something from it. You know, I saw this example where very large tobacco company gives away like 75 million dollars to to charities, but then they spend like 90 million dollars publicizing it. So it's like, what is what are they actually trying to trying to do here? You know, like certainly some good was done with that money, but it was clearly like giving with your left hand, you knowing what your right hand is doing. But that that's not what what you're talking about. You're you're talking about giving for the for discipleship. I mean, that's the that's the mission, right? Is to, you know, show people. I mean, just how challenging is it when you hear when I hear what you're doing, when I hear what you know, Alan Barnhart is doing and you know, what Simon Lee has done. Um it it's it it sharpens us. I mean, that's what it's supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00And and it spurs us on to something bigger and greater as well. Those two men that you mentioned have been so pivotal in my life and leadership to help me develop anything good that we have going on. Uh honestly, at the inspiration of both of those men come a lot of the campaigns and programs that we've started as an agency. We asked this brave question three years ago what about our vision do we actually care about? Like just this brave, are we willing to just like throw it up on the wall and just say, does this thing suck? Are we really excited about this? And honestly, we looked at it and we were being vulnerable. I just said, Maybe half of it. Maybe half of the things in this vision statement are things we actually care about. And if by the time we got to the end of this vision statement we hadn't we didn't do them, we would be sad about the other half, take it or leave it. And we just said, if that's true, we have to rewrite this vision as a company. And we just started asking the question who is our who? If we're a business as a minister, you can talk to any ministry out there and go, who's your who? And they're gonna go, homeless people, mental illness, women in pregnancy, extreme pop, whatever it is. They're they know they're who. Ask a business as a ministry, who's your who? And maybe half of them, maybe, would know what the answer is. For us, we wanted to get really good at that. So we looked back in the wake of everything that we've done, and we went, God, where have we sown seed you've harvested that you want us to go harvest again? And so we rewrote our vision statement, and it has nothing to do with digital marketing. Our vision as a digital marketing agency is to restore dignity, purpose, and freedom to the lives of women and children impacted by extreme poverty and sex trafficking. Nothing to do with digital marketing and yet everything. We created this big, hairy, audacious goal that we wanted to start 10 care centers around the world that would care for those women. Within the first year of setting that, we launched North Florida's uh only sex trafficking safe house in all of history. Within a few months of opening it, it was full. And in a few months after that, it saw its first resident graduate from some of its programs.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00So we said maybe this goal is not big enough. We partnered even more closely with Compassion International, we've been partnered with for eight years now, and we're coming alongside of them in May of 2023 to launch three care centers at the same time in Rosita, Nicaragua. It's gonna be an absolute, monumentous shift in an entire community to see women and children rescued from extreme poverty, uh, families injected with gospel-centered curriculum. Uh, it's, you know, just and we started the Safe Global Fund through the National Christian Foundation. It's a donor-advised fund where people can go on safe globalfund.com and give to these efforts. Safe stands for strategic alliances fighting exploitation. And it's it's working together to see something done, partnering with other existing gospel-centered organizations and saying, I don't want to go start my own 501c3. I don't want to go start my own nonprofit. You're doing it well. God's using you. I want to get behind you and be your gospel patron. Um, and I I just so much of our business leadership can be reformed when we just think God gave this to me for a reason. My labor influence, finances, and expertise. Where am I supposed to give it away?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, there's so many other things that we could talk about that you're doing. One of the ones I want to make sure we talk about during the interview today is um I'm gonna throw you a softball right right in your wheelhouse here. What do you do to celebrate uh your when you see your vision being fulfilled, your your purpose is being carried out? Like, how do you how do you celebrate that for your team?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I believe every executive leader's number one job is to guard the purpose of their organization. And I think the only executive leader who wouldn't agree with that is the one that doesn't have a purpose worth fighting for. The only executive leader who goes, no, no, no, it's not that, it's revenue generation, it's this and that. You probably don't have a mission that's worth investing in and fighting for. If that's the case, then your primary job is about finding it. And when you do, your primary position becomes to guard that for the company. I don't know if you've ever seen it before. There's a gif of a of a cat, and it's just banging its hands on the keyboard, like somebody's sitting behind, and this cat's just banging its hands on the keyboard. Nothing so conclusively demonstrates to me what the vast majority of all work looks like on a daily basis around the country. Come in, bang on the freaking keyboard, clock out, go home, sleep, come back, bang on the keyboard, clock every day after day after day. And people want something more. Call it millennials, call it Gen Z, or just freaking call it humanity. Humanity wants a purpose worth working for.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't want to come in and bang on the keyboard. I want to know that when I bang on the keyboard, something happens. And one of the cool things I've been inspired by by leaders that do a good job of guarding purpose is they in institutionalize and operationalize a set of processes that help them with consistency to guard that purpose. Some of those are uh auditory. You've walked in before to the place, and on the way out, it's like if you had a great service today, ding the bell. You know, it's like Moe's when you walk in. Welcome to Mo's. Yeah, it's like the same, like something that celebrates their culture, builds into their culture, into their purpose, into that persona through something that you hear. What we wanted to do at FOS is we wanted to build into something that was something that you would see, something that you could see, something visual. FOS is the Greek word for light. And so we built two years ago the FOS light wall. It's 10 foot wide, four foot tall, a couple inches deep, hangs in our lobby, and it has 267 light bulb sockets inside of it. Every single time there's a mission moment at FOS where our purpose is fulfilled. We gather the whole team in the lobby, any remote people on a computer, and we stand there and we celebrate that mission moment and walk up to the lightboard, take out a new light bulb, screw it in, turn it on, and try and bring the house down with shouting and celebrating and clapping and screaming. And it's a moment where together as a team, energy is created around the fulfillment of our mission. For us, there's been five things that we've kind of categorized that that help us to know what that looks like and when those mission moments happen. When a new person joins our team, that's a mission moment because our mission is about being a place our team members never want to leave. Clients can't do without the world is better foreign. And so doing exemplify the love of Jesus. Um, when a new client mission partner joins, we're now getting to fuel their mission in the marketplace. We turn on a light bulb. When a new child is sponsored through compassion, when somebody on the team or through the team starts their relationship with Jesus, or anything else deemed worthy of fulfilling our mission, and that's a blank slate opportunity to go. This was our purpose in action. And it's this visual reminder, it turns on automatically before anybody gets to the studio, and it's the last thing off after everybody's left. A constantly burning board of light bulbs that help us remember what you're gonna do today is not just banging on a keyboard, it's changing somebody's life and bringing love, care, compassion, and ministry out of this work.
SPEAKER_01It's it's a sight to see. Haven't seen it in person, but I've seen uh seen it on video and pictures. Um, so is it filled up by now or so?
SPEAKER_00Funny, uh, my team told me when I turned when we turned it on for the first time uh two years ago, it was at our our first versory, our eight-year anniversary. And I unveil it, you know, the pull down the sheet kind of thing, and everybody's clapping and celebrating. It was a great moment. And I said, I I think it'll take three to five years for us to to turn on. And everybody, like half of the people laugh. I was like, What did I say something dumb? Is there like snot hanging up my nose? Like, what is going on here? I'm like embarrassed. And and somebody just like raised their hand, like, I give us a year, we'll have it turned on. So we're two years into it, it's over halfway, but it's not turned on. So I was right, but I was also encouraged at the same time for a team that wanted to go hard after getting those mission moments lit on the board.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, wow. What's been one of your favorite mission moments when you you you should you shared the story of the uh the lady coming to Christ and serving in the church? And what what's been maybe another one of your favorite mission moments when you got to turn on one of those light bulbs?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I just speaking real vulnerably, last year was an extremely hard year for me personally. My mom passed away uh from Parkinson's disease. And while I laid by her bedside for a week as she died, um I recounted all of the different things that she had taught me in life, and so much of who I am uh has been shaped by who my mom was to me. And so a difficult thing to tie directly to our mission, but I see in our mission the footprints of my mom's love, care, hospitality, creativity in me and around the studio. We remodeled the studio last year. Beautiful new space. She would have loved to decorate that with me. So when we celebrated the addition of the new space, not only do we turn on a light bulb for the new space as a place to celebrate our mission, but we also turn on a light bulb to celebrate my mom and her influence in our mission. When uh Derek's mom, uh dad uh was in the studio a few months ago, and he talked to our team about the way that they uh exemplified our mission in their love for him and his wife who passed away. I had him come to the board and turn on a light bulb to celebrate her life, her love, her ministry, and our ministry to them in the middle of a hard season. So just very personal, emotional things that that reach outside of business and professional life and just say, look, you are a person, your life is worth worth something. You are dignity, you are of value and get to celebrate that as a part of fulfilling our mission together as a team. Wow. That's beautiful.
SPEAKER_01How do you how do you encourage business uh influencers, owners, executives to implement? I mean, do you say you guys need a light wall, or do you say, you know, here's a way to kind of adapt this? Because I'm sure you have others coming to you saying, like, man, we got to do something like that. What do you say to them?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The first thing I I would ask you, um, do you have a mission worth living for? As I talked about, you can't celebrate your mission in action if nobody freaking cares about what you're doing. Does anybody care about it? Is anybody inspired by it? Do people come and work for you because you're cool, what you do is cool, or your why behind what you're doing is cool. That one will carry you so much further. And I'm not just talking about like Patrick Lencioni's working genius and whether or not you're a galvanizer and can like rally people around you because you're a cool visionary. I'm just saying, dude, does what you do matter? Does what you do matter? If what you do, if what you do as a company, if that thing matters, then go ask your people how you can operationalize a system so that the things that you do with your revenue generation, your financial management, your operations, your organizational development, and your ministry could all tie together around that purpose more acutely. You probably don't need to hire some consultant to go figure that out. You have smart people on your team who, if you opened your mouth and you asked them how to do that, could come up with some really cool ideas. Maybe it's maybe it's auditory, something that's heard. Maybe it's visual, something that's seen. Maybe it's kinesthetic, something that's done. Somebody goes and pins something up. You take a coffee roaster and you take a bean and you have this big tall glass cylinder. And every time a mission moment, somebody on their team is going and dropping another coffee bean, and it's just filling up, and customers are going, What's this thing over here? It keeps getting bigger. Something, something that that operationalizes inside of who you are, what you do, and how you do it, your purpose at every area of your company. That's that's but it starts with this brave question Does what you're doing actually matter? Is your mission a part of your DNA and identity?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that sounds a lot more inspiring than just having a giant banner up that says days without incident.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So true. And and even better than one that the banner that flies over the company and celebrates with them your new top line growth in revenue. They don't care about that. They don't.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they definitely do not care about that. Um, they're glad to have a job, but you know, it's I mean, but that that's about it.
SPEAKER_00It's gotta be for something more, and there is something better inside of it. Andy Stanley would would ask, you want to find purpose? Is that the intersection of what breaks your heart? Where's there an opportunity and where do you have skill? What breaks your heart? Where's there an opportunity and where do you have skill? Right in the middle of that is an organizational purpose, a personal purpose that is worth working for, that's worth fighting for. Uh I'm giving a talk next week in St. Augustine, and the title of the talk is guarding purpose, uh, the only sufficiently sustaining, inspiring, and worthwhile reason to keep going when times are hard. You will certainly find it. And in my darkest seasons of life and leadership, where I've gotten out of bed and go, What the heck am I doing? I ask myself, is my mission worth fighting for? And if the answer is yes, then the only right next question is, is it done? And if it's not done, then my only response is to keep going.
SPEAKER_01Brandon, thank you for inspiring us today. I I know I'm I'm certainly inspired, and um definitely gonna be praying about you know what's what's next for me as a result of what I've heard today. And uh, and I'm sure our listeners feel the same. Um, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your passion, your time with us today. We're all better for it. My fun. And I want to say fosscreative.com, phoscreative.com is the website. Anything else you want to say about how people can connect with you, get involved with what you're doing, you know, hire you guys. What do you take it away?
SPEAKER_00Two two fun ways to do that. One, we just launched the FOS Life and Leadership Podcast. There are two episodes out as of this current recording. Um, the first one was with my wife and I how to build a business that won't destroy your family. Uh, the feedback's been amazing. Check out the FOSS Life and Leadership Podcast. Been a blast to share our top 10 life and leadership lessons learned in 10 years. And then I would just say this as well. If if some of what we talked about today with women who have been trafficked, children that are in extreme poverty, if those are things that that break your heart, well, there's an opportunity for you to get involved there as well. The safe, safe, not the safe global fund.com, safe globalfund.com is a way for you to raise your hand and say, I'm in. I want to see one of these next care centers launched. I want to open open up part of my life, my labor influence finances and expertise, and be a part of that. So check out the FOS Life and Leadership Podcast and Safeglobalfund.com.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Brandon, thanks again. Really appreciate you.
SPEAKER_00My pleasure.
SPEAKER_01We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business Podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HCU's Center for Christianity and Business, and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.